Nuclear Medicine - NMED 541–F

Prerequisites:

Completion of all junior year clerkships.

Location:

Franklin Square Hospital

Description and Goals:

This elective is designed to teach the student to have a basic understanding of the physiologic processes involved in tissue uptake and distribution of clinically useful radiopharmaceuticals in health and disease, know the indications for common nuclear medicine procedures, and gain the ability to detect gross abnormalities on common nuclear medicine procedures and construct a nuclear medicine report to the corresponding images. On the first day of the rotation, the student is provided with a list of procedures performed at Franklin Square Hospital Center including procedure names, radiotracer used and main indications. This list is reviewed with the student by the teaching Nuclear Medicine attending. The student is also provided with a copy of the book "A Clinician’s Guide to Nuclear Medicine".

The student is involved with the daily reading of the scintigraphic studies in a busy Nuclear Medicine Department under the supervision of a physician board certified in Nuclear Medicine. The population mix includes inpatients and outpatients with a wide range of clinical problems. The student is prompted to describe the imaging findings and discuss their meanings in the clinical context of the patient and participates in the entire process of evaluation of study request for appropriateness, customization of test according to indication, bedside evaluation of patients, diagnostic interventions, and correlation of the images with clinical, laboratory and other imaging data. The medical student is occasionally asked to follow up on further diagnostic or therapeutic interventions performed on the patient to develop perspective.